A Halifax navy intelligence officer who pleaded guilty to espionage was paid nearly $72,000 for selling secrets to the Russians.

In addition, Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle was also told by his Russian handler that he would become a “pigeon” or liaison for all Russian agents in Canada.

That information was revealed by Crown attorney Lyne Decarie Thursday during the opening day of Delisle’s two-day sentencing hearing.

The commissioned officer pleaded guilty in October to one charge of breach of trust and two charges of passing information to a foreign entity that could harm Canada’s interests.

Decarie told the provincial court hearing that Delisle received 23 payments totalling $71,817 between 2007 and 2011 for his services.

The payments started after Delisle walked into the Russian embassy in Ottawa in July 2007 and offered his services for money, the prosecutor said. Agents from that country told him to provide a “manuscript” on the 10th of each month with information pertaining to Russia.

Decarie said Delisle came under suspicion after returning to this country in September 2011 from a trip to Brazil, where he met a Russian agent named Victor who told him that he would become a “pigeon” or liaison for all Russian agents in Canada.

The Canada Border Services Agency became suspicious when Delisle returned from that trip without a tan and little knowledge of tourist sites in Rio de Janeiro, the prosecutor said.

Suspicions were further raised because he had three prepaid credit cards, thousands of dollars in U.S. currency and a handwritten note with a gawab.com email address, the Crown attorney said.

The prosecutor then detailed how Delisle transferred classified information to the Russians.

He searched his secure computer system at work for references to Russia, she said. When he found them, they were copied onto a floppy disc. That disc was then taken to an unsecured computer system, where the information was transfered to a USB stick.

Delisle then took the USB stick home, where he copied the information it contained to the gawab.com email address he shared with his Russian controller.

This method made it so that he never had to send the email, Decarie said.

After the prosecutor outlined her case, Judge Patrick Curran asked Delisle if agreed to the statement of facts.

“Yes, your honour,” he quietly replied.

Michelle Tessier, the director general of internal security for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the court the damage caused by Delisle’s spying was rated “high,” and there was “no mitigating factors to lessen the damage.”

Tessier, a Crown witness, said the agency is still assessing the damage to Canadian security.

Two Canadian Security Intelligence Service reports were among the documents intercepted by Canadian officials after they tapped Delisle’s home computer, she said. Those documents contained information “that would allow knowledgeable readers to identify a human source,” which is someone recruited to provide information to CSIS.

Another document included the names, titles and phone numbers of CSIS employees, Tessier said.

Delisle admitted to passing other CSIS documents to the Russians, which is why the damage rating she assessed is high, she said.

“We know he passed a lot of information over a long period of time,” Tessier said. “They were interested in Western agents.”

One of the documents was dated Jan. 9, 2012, just two days before Canadian officials intercepted the information Delisle was trying to email.

“That indicates to us that he was tasked for fresh information,” Tessier said.

It was also an indication of “what he was being asked to send to the Russians,” she said.

It was “extremely concerning” that Delisle was able to pass information over a long period of time, Tessier said.

Canada is part of the Five Eyes security community, which includes the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. In the wake of the Delisle spy case, those countries have demanded that Canada increase the way it safeguards information, Tessier said.

Failure to meet that demand would mean “there is a risk we may be cut off from that intelligence,” she said.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Mike Taylor, Tessier said there is no evidence that any human sources had their identities compromised.

Two other security experts with the Canadian military testified for the Crown.

One of them, Brig-Gen. Robert Williams, the director general of military signals intelligence for the Department of National Defence, said the information handed over to the Russians could cause “grave danger to the public interest of Canada and could cause harm to Canadians.”

He also said the incident had caused some damage to Canada’s relationship with some of its allies.

Taylor didn’t call Delisle to the stand.

Instead, his only witness was Wesley Wark, a security and intelligence analyst on the faculty of the University of Toronto who disagreed with the conclusions reached by the Crown’s security experts.

He said their conclusions were based on documents that were not delivered and when agencies don’t know what was previously sent they “engage in worst-case scenarios.”

Wark said it would be difficult for the Canadian intelligence community to prove Delisle caused much real damage because police intercepted only two attempted transmissions during the years he was selling secrets.

He said he hadn’t seen any evidence of a Russian reaction or response to the material they received over the years.

“It is, in a way, theoretical harm,” testified Wark. “To be honest, it is very difficult to assess the harm he has done.”

While a walk-in agent would be a valuable asset to the Russians, they would look suspiciously at the information that person passed to them because they wouldn’t know what motivated the walk-in agent to offer up secrets or if that information was accurate, Wark said.

It struck him as odd that the Russians didn’t ask Delisle to get them some of the more sensitive information that he had access to, the defence’s expert witness said.

“Mr. Delisle seemed puzzled that his handlers weren’t interested in scientific and technical information,” Wark said. “The picture we have is that they wanted information primarily, it seems, for counter intelligence. There’s a curious disjunction between what he could have provided ... and what they asked him to provide.”

But during her cross-examination of Wark, Decarie said the fact Delisle received a $50,000 lump sum payment while he was in Brazil and was told he would become pigeon indicated that “they trusted him.”

Outside court, neither Decarie nor Taylor would say what sentence they would ask Curran to impose, but Taylor said they were far apart in their recommendations.

They will make their sentencing submissions this morning and Curran is expected to reserve his decision until a later date.

Delisle is the first person to be sentenced under Canada’s Security of Information Act. The breach of trust charge carries a maximum sentence of five years, while the other charges carry life sentences.

Delisle joined the navy as a reservist in 1996, became a member of the regular forces in 2001 and became a commissioned officer in 2008. He was arrested last January.